Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (
October 14,
1906 â€"
December 4,
1975) was a
German political theorist. She has often been described as a
philosopher, although she always refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world."
Arendt was born of secular
Jewish parents in the then- independent city of Linden in Lower Saxony (which is now part of
Hanover) and was raised in
Königsberg (the hometown of her admired precursor
Immanuel Kant) and
Berlin.
She studied philosophy with
Martin Heidegger at the
University of Marburg, and had a long, sporadic romantic relationship with him, something that has been criticised because of his
Nazi sympathies.
During one of their breakups, Arendt moved to
Heidelberg to write a dissertation on the concept of love in the thought of
Saint Augustine, under the direction of the existentialist philosopher-psychologist
Karl Jaspers.
The dissertation was published in 1929, but Arendt was prevented from
habilitating (and thus from teaching in German universities) in 1933 because she was Jewish, and thereupon fled Germany for Paris, where she met and befriended the literary critic and
Marxist mystic
Walter Benjamin. While in France, Arendt worked to support and aid Jewish refugees.
However, with the
German military occupation of parts of France following the French declaration of war during
World War II, and the deportation of Jews to
concentration camps, Arendt had to flee from France. In 1940, she married the German poet and philosopher
Heinrich BlĂĽcher.
In 1941, Arendt escaped with her husband and her mother to the
United States with the assistance of the American diplomat
Hiram Bingham IV, who illegally issued visas to her and around 2500 other Jewish refugees. She then became active in the German-Jewish community in New York and wrote for the weekly
Aufbau.
After World War II she resumed relations with Heidegger, and testified on his behalf in a German
denazification hearing. She also resumed communication with Jaspers,
[Hannah Arendt & Karl Jaspers (1992) Correspondence 1926-1969, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ISBN 0151078874] developing a deep intellectual friendship with him and began corresponding with
Mary McCarthy.
[Hannah Arendt & Mary McCarthy (1995) Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McaCarthy 1949-1975, Secker & Warburg, ISBN 0436202514] In 1950, she became a
naturalized citizen of the United States. Arendt served as a visiting scholar at the
University of California at Berkeley,
Princeton University,
Columbia University, and
Northwestern University. She also served as a professor on The Committee of Social Thought at the
University of Chicago, as well as at
The New School in New York City, and served as a fellow at
Yale University. In 1959, she became the first woman appointed a full professorship at Princeton. [
1]
On her death at age 69 in 1975, Arendt was buried at
Bard College in
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where her husband taught for many years.
Arendt's work deals with the nature of
power, and the subjects of
politics,
authority, and
totalitarianism. Much of her work focuses on affirming a conception of freedom which is synonymous with collective political action among equals.
Arguing against the libertarian assumption that "freedom begins where politics ends," Arendt theorizes freedom as public and associative, drawing on examples from the Greek polis, American townships, the Paris Commune, and the civil rights movements of the 1960's (among others) to illustrate this conception of freedom.
Arguably, her most influential work was
The Human Condition (1958) in which she distinguishes labor, work, and action, and teases out the implications of these distinctions. Her theory of political action is extensively developed in this work.
Her first major book was
The Origins of Totalitarianism, which traced the roots of
Stalinist Communism and
Nazism in both
anti-Semitism and
imperialism. The book was controversial because it suggested an essential identity between the two phenomena, which some believe to be separate in both origins and nature.
In her reporting of the
Eichmann trial for
The New Yorker, which evolved into the book
Eichmann in Jerusalem, she raised the question whether
evil is radical or simply a function of
banality—the tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without critically thinking about the results of their action or inaction. This work created a great deal of controversy and animosity for Arendt from fellow Jews.
Her final book,
The Life of the Mind was incomplete when she died, but is still widely read in its current form.
Eugene McCarraher wrote in 2006:
"On a sunny March morning in 1962, a taxi bearing Hannah Arendt collided with a truck as it sped across Central Park. Awakening in the ambulance, Arendt moved her limbs, rolled her eyes, and tested her memory by recalling decades, stanzas of poetry, and telephone numbers. As she later described the episode to her close friend Mary McCarthy, 'for a fleeting moment I had the feeling that it was up to me whether I wanted to live or die.' While she 'did not think that death was terrible,' she also thought that 'life was quite beautiful and that I rather like it.'
"Today, Arendt's brush with the Reaper might become another saccharine epiphany, denatured and packaged for the burgeoning market in 'uplift' and 'inspiration.' Arendt herself would surely recoil from much of our 'life-affirming' drivel. If it isn't advertisingâ€"'smell the roses' in our flower shop, 'appreciate the little things' with help from our investment firmâ€"it's an unwitting invitation to forget the larger concerns of politics, philosophy, and religion. Having spent her life pondering the carnage and futility of the 20th, most murderous of centuries, and having escaped calamities far worse than an auto wreck, Arendt might well admonish us that beauty is always bound up with the broader forces of history, whose evasion and neglect will inevitably rob the world of its deepest charms....":(Christianity Today, March/April 2006)
Arendt was instrumental in the creation of Structured Liberal Education (SLE) at Stanford University. She wrote a letter to the then president of Stanford University to convince the university to enact Mark Mancall's vision of a residentially-based humanities program.
*
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) at the
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy*The American
Library of Congress has
The Role of Experience in Hannah Arendt's Political Thought: Three Essays by Jerome Kohn, Director,
Hannah Arendt Center, New School University. With link to Arendt's
papers.
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International Hannah Arendt NewsletterEuropean Graduate School - Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt at Jewish Virtual Library*
Centenary Retrospective in Christianity Today magazine*
Hannah Arendt: Biography at FemBio*
"Thinking Out Loud" Review of a book of essays on Arendt, in
Lingua Franca.
*
The philosophical Madonna On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Hannah Arendt's death, Daniel Cohn-Bendit recalls his relationship with the great philosopher and reflects on her and on his generation at signandsight.com
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Hannah Arendt Thinking Space. Art Exhibtion Berlin 2006*
Find-A-Grave profile for Hannah ArendtOther Languages*
Article on Hannah Arendt*
Profile, collection of articles, and quotations on Hannah Arendt
